St. Patrick's Day

First off, my favorite version of Danny Boy...



I'm not sure I can say, "Happy St. Patrick's Day" because it is actually the commemoration of the death of St. Patrick. Around our house we sometimes just say, "Happy Patrick's Day!" for Patrick, my son, who is indeed named after the patron saint of Ireland. With a name like "Donnahoo" it seemed only fitting to name my first son with a traditional Irish name. Do we have any real Irish blood in our family? I'm not sure yet: the genealogical jury is still out on that one. My Dad and Aunt Penny are still working on it. One of these days we'll find out when the O'Donaghue family crossed over and became Donnahoo. We are back as far as the early 1800s in the southeast US but no hint of immigration in that family line.

I'm sure you have read a lot about Saint Patrick. Did he really run the snakes out of Ireland? Probably not. But he did help bring Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century. And he did it through faith and love, not by force, as many countries were converted around that time.

So I wore green to work but I raised a glass of sparkling water in his honor. What did you expect from a Mormon? }B^)

Donnahoo.com is transferred...

After some quick economic calculations the decision was made to transfer the donnahoo.com website. I'll be posting family updates, links to new photo sets on flickr, posts on my companion blog Normalguytri.com, and lots of other sundry thoughts and commentary.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled madness/neuroses.

A word on economics: the old price to host my website was $15/month for a service I haven't updated in years due to poor technology integration (i.e. it was hard to post updates). With Wordpress it's only $12/year. No, I didn't have to think about that decision for more than about 10 seconds, but it did take me almost a year to get off my duff and do something about it.

Catching up...

Wow, I can't believe I haven't posted in almost a year.

 

Anyway, I survived Cycle Oregon. I'll have to type up a report one of these days.

 

In the mean time, I've finished 2 triathlons, the Flying Wheels Century, and a couple of other rides, not to mention all the the training I've done.

 

A guy I know who is really into Triathlons, Ray Maker, is giving away a Forerunner 310XT on his blog. I hope all of you enter!

 

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/08/garmin-forerunner-310xt-giveaway.html

 

I'll add more later when I have more time.

Cycle Oregon Day 0

I arrived in Medford today for the start of Cycle Oregon. Dinner was prime rib steak (no I'm not kidding). It was really nice to see my old elementary school again, which has changed very little. The evening's entertainment was a be-bop jazz band that played foor over an hour: it was easy to see that most folks were not interested, although I found it a good distraction. Tomorrow is a big day. I am uncharacteristicly excited, like a kid on Christmas Eve. I sure hope I can sleep tonight.

CO 2009 Reading List

I have finalized my reading list for Cycle Oregon 2009. Here it is divided up into sections. There are a lot of titles because I may have a lot of time to myself. We’ll see how much of this I actually get through!

Fiction:

The Archimedes Effect by Tom Clancy (Amazon)

Non-Fiction:

A Brief History of Time (Illustrated, Updated, & Expanded 1996 Edition) by Stephen Hawking (Amazon)

Fermat’s Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World’s Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh (Amazon)

Religious:

The Book of Mormon, Pocket Size (LDSCatalog.org)

True to the Faith: A Gospel Reference (LDSCatalog.org)

I debated whether or not to bring my entire scriptures set but my bag has to weigh in at less than 65 lbs, which includes my sleeping bag, clothes, extra bike parts, etc. With this in mind I decided to limit my scriptures to only the pocket sized Book of Mormon and the True to the Faith book. These should keep me busy each morning.

The non-fiction books are quite deep. The Hawking book was a birthday gift a few years back received during my college days. I had no time to read it or any of the other book gifts that people have given me. I was so busy reading for class that other books have suffered until class ended in March of this year. I have quite a collection of back-reading to do. The Singh book was a recommendation by my Cryptography professor after he had us read another of Singh’s books for class, The Code Book, a fascinating book about the history of modern cryptography.

The Clancy book is escapist literature at its finest, at least as far as I am concerned. It’s pretty light weight and I really like Clancy’s style, even though he didn’t technically write this book.

Only 6 more days to go! (I actually leave in 4 days on a Friday but the ride starts on a Sunday) My next post will be about the technology aspects of my ride.

1 week left!

Only 1 week left until my big week-long cycling tour. I will be posting info on my ride with daily updates and pictures. More info to come tomorrow...

Monday (Sept. 7, Labor Day) is my last big ride before I start tapering off my riding in preperation for the big day. I get to see my sister Marianne and hopefully my Uncle Trent and Aunt Robin, who I haven't seen in over 8 years. I was hoping Uncle Trent would come and ride the entire week with me but urgent family issues kept him busy elsewhere. He will not be riding but I hope to spend some quality time with them. Maybe I'll have time to visit the new Medford Temple located in Central Point.

I first heard of Cycle Oregon from a friend at work who was doing it. Last year CO 2008 rode in northeast Oregon, including Baker City, Enterprise, the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Hell's Canyon, and lots of simply gorgeous country. When I heard that CO 2009 would be starting in Medford (my old stomping grounds) I jumped at the chance to register. Good thing too because registration filled up in short order (2000 spots in 10 days?). I was reading the directions to the parking area and came upon a revelation. The directions included a lot of street names that I was quite familiar with and as I went through the directions in my head I said to myself, "no way, that sounds like they are directing me to my old Elementary School," which they were. I opened Bing Maps and verified it: the start/finish area was across the street from Jefferson Elementary, which I attended in 1984-6 in the 5th and 6th grades (Mrs. Leavens and Mr. Benney for you Lee-trivia buffs). The long-term parking area is the south field of the school. I haven't seen that school since we moved away back in '88.

I registered without really thinking about what my goals would be and what I would accomplish. Now that my Uncle isn't going with me I'll be essentially traveling by myself for 8 days. On the 7 day ride I'll be covering 437 miles and 28,202 feet of elevation gain. That averages out to 62.5 miles and 4028 feet per day. I know of no other friends, family, or even acquaintances that are riding. I'm usually pretty good at finding folks to hang out with but other than that I'll be virtually alone with lots of time to my thoughts, reading, or whatever I do to pass the time. I'll be taking along a couple of books, my scriptures, and other things to pass the time. I'll post my reading list later along with other things I'm taking with me that might seem out of the ordinary.

Only 6 days until departure!

Camp Parsons Day 1

We arrived at camp on time and without incident. After a short introduction to camp the boys immediately ran off to their respective merit badge classes. We took the swim test after lunch and all passed that took it. The boys enjoyed a swim at swim beach during the hot afternoon weather. For our first troop time we went to the archery range where many of the boys learned to shoot for the first time. Pictures from day 1 are on my flickr site.

 

We got up on Tuesday morning and 5 of us did the 6am “Polar Bear Pier Dive” (John, Lex, Ewan, Bros. Pulsipher and Donnahoo).

Tuesday we have scheduled: a 5 mile hike, rifle shooting, field games, and a service project.